came toward me so I hit him. Common assault not good enough for you?’
Bryant looked around at the depressing green walls of the Bayham Street Mortuary. The fierce overhead strip-lighting buzzed like the faint memory of a head injury. The police building had been converted from a Victorian school, and had so far defied all attempts at modernization. Rumbling steel extractor ducts had been set into the ceiling to alleviate the emetic smell of chemicals, but it still looked like a place where Death would choose to sit and read a paper. Finch’s countenance, peering over a plastic sheet at him like a doleful hatchet, added an extra layer of gloom to the proceedings.
‘Which river did it come from?’ asked Bryant. ‘When will the sample be back?’
‘It’s already back. Your lad Kershaw brought it over a few minutes ago. I rather like him. He seems to know what he’s doing, which makes a pleasant change in your place.’
‘That’s odd, you never like anyone. Have you noticed how fruit gums don’t have any taste since they stopped putting artificial flavours in them?’ Bryant proffered the tube. ‘I shouldn’t eat them, they stick to my plate. I don’t see the old lady anywhere.’
‘I’ve put Mrs Singh away. She’s to be spared the indignity of any further exposure in this room. Look at the lights they’ve put in, it’s like McDonald’s.’
‘Smells like it as well. Have you been cooking meat?’
‘I caught my assistant eating a doner kebab in here last night. I warned him that his dietary habits could legally invalidate us. This is supposed to be a sterile zone, although I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found your cough drops in a body bag. My toxicology database makes no provision for boiled sweets. Ah, here’s your Mr Kershaw now.’
Bryant was amazed. Oswald Finch was clearly taken with the new recruit. Perhaps he knew about Kershaw’s powerful political connections, although at his advanced age he couldn’t be hoping for promotion. Kershaw was wide-eyed, bespectacled, blond and unironed, with a cowlick of gravity-defying hair, as tall and thin as a sparkler, a later edition of Finch. He tapped at a plastic-coated analysis data-sheet and grinned, reminding Bryant of himself in his early twenties. ‘Well, it’s not actually a poison,’ he told them, ‘but there’s enough muck in it to have given her a nasty stomach ache, if it had managed to travel that far. Traces of mercury and lead, various harmful nitrates and plenty of interesting bacteria, the kind of cryptosporidia that lurks about in dead water, only prevented from proliferation by low temperatures. I think we’ve got ourselves some Monster Soup.’ He slipped the page to Finch, who read the bar graphs.
‘What do you mean?’ Finch asked over the top of his glasses.
Bryant smiled knowingly. ‘I think Mr Kershaw is referring to the title of a famous satirical print published in 1828, dedicated to the London water companies. It shows a horrified woman dropping her tea as she examines a drop of London water and finds it full of disgusting creatures. People drank from the Thames, which was incredibly polluted by faeces and rotting animal carcasses.’
‘Just so,’ Kershaw agreed, nodding vigorously.
‘You’re saying this is Thames water?’ asked Finch.
‘Exactly.’ Bryant found himself concurring with the new boy.
‘The kind of bacteria you find in dead water?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But the Thames isn’t dead. Far from it.’
‘Sorry, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. It’s Thames water, all right, but extremely stagnated.’
‘Does it taste bad?’
‘Really,’ Finch complained, ‘how would he know a thing like that?’
‘Oh, absolutely vile,’ said Kershaw, happy to answer the question. He turned to Finch. ‘Naturally I did a taste test to see if she could possibly have ingested it by mistake, but I think it’s highly unlikely.’ He shoved his glasses back up his nose. ‘I checked with Mr Banbury about the contents of her kettle—I had an odd thought she might somehow have filled it from an unclean source, but no, pure London ring-main water from her kitchen tap, fewer trace elements than many bottled designer waters.’
‘Then I can’t imagine what it was doing in her mouth.’ Bryant offered Kershaw a fruit gum.
‘That’s your job to find out, isn’t it?’ snapped Finch, annoyed by the shifting loyalties around him. ‘Meanwhile, I can tell you we’re heading for an open verdict.’
‘Why, what’s the cause of death?’
‘Heart stopped beating.’
‘Yes, I know that—’ Bryant began.
‘No, I mean it just stopped beating. No reason.’
‘There has to be a reason.’
‘No, there doesn’t,’ Finch replied stubbornly. ‘Sudden